


Comfort

by thedevilchicken



Category: Great Escape (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken





	Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Destina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/gifts).



Willie was the one who saved his life.

Danny had always been practical to a fault, hardly the intellectual of any group but he’d never found that a setback. He was good with his hands and thought in immensely manual terms; the fine art of the escape needed men like Danny just as much as Bartlett or Hendley or Blythe because after all, who expected the higher-ups to get their hands dirty? Danny couldn’t imagine the SBO digging around in the dirt and the mud, feeling the sickly squelch of unfortunate insect life that might cross his path, down in the tunnel where breathing became hard and his eyes ached with the low light.

He didn’t expect the others to dig. That was his job, though he supposed it was less assignment than choice, and a choice he almost regretted. He had to steel himself against the way the earth seemed to close in around him every time he was down there, even when the tunnel wasn’t coming down around his ears. He forced his mind onto the job, the rhythm of tools against earth, the next obstacle, the next stage, shoring up, length, the end of the tunnel beyond the line of the woods. They were going to make it this time. He thought about clean air beyond the fence, about freedom, about life outside of the camp.

They were going to make it; Willie told him so. They sat side by side on his bunk once he’d showered, though there was still dirt there under his fingernails that he just couldn’t get rid of. It was driving him crazy but he couldn’t show it. He’d let them shut him in down there if they wanted to, he’d dig for hours in the subterranean heat as the oxygen was all sucked out of the air. He’d blunt the spade down to the handle if he had to, then he’d get on with living his life. This was just an interlude.

Willie rubbed his neck with one hand as they talked, or as Willie talked to him because frankly Danny had never been a man of many words. Willie liked to talk and Danny didn’t mind listening because it calmed him, something about the hours after the first collapse so many collapses and so many escapes ago when he’d been blocked into the tunnel, no light, so close to asphyxia, the taste of loamy earth an peat in his mouth. All he’d had to hang onto was the sound of Willie’s calm voice. He hated the word but claustrophobia explained it. Willie kept his secret and they dug.

Willie saved his life, over and over, talked him through every bump in the road or block in the tunnel. Then they sat together, ate together, drank together, talked together, and Danny felt safe as Willie’s hands rubbed his shoulders. He held onto him in the dark sometimes, and that just seemed right.

“You can come with me when we get out,” Willie told him. Danny nodded his approval and after that there was no question of their plans.

They’d stick together; Willie’s family had a farm and Danny could work outdoors. It was something to look forward to. All the needed to do was escape.


End file.
